Hayden Panettiere’s – As Hayden Panettiere prepares to release her memoir next week, her mother Lesley Vogel is firing back, disputing Hayden’s accounts of being “groomed” and describing the unfolding “drama” as a tactic “partially to sell books.”
Hayden Panettiere is set to publish her tell-all memoir next week, but the relationship at the center of her “reckoning” is already exploding into fresh public conflict.
In interviews leading up to the release of This Is Me: A Reckoning. Panettiere has been laying out her childhood experiences. her path into addiction. and the strained dynamic with her mother.. And this time. Lesley Vogel says she’s not just disagreeing—she’s painting the entire public dispute in stark terms as the book tour gears up.
Panettiere, speaking in a Thursday interview with The Hollywood Reporter, described feeling “groomed” into acting as a child.. She said, “I think it’s the way I was raised.. I was groomed.. I was like a little soldier and I always have been.. No was never an option.. It was just. ‘Here are your scenes. here’s your dialogue. memorize it. hit the marks. do what your director tells you to do.’ I took my marching orders.”
She also connected that pressure to her later struggles, saying, “[Things shifted for me] when I started self-harming in the form of substance abuse.” Panettiere added that her people-pleasing “built up and up,” and that her life “revolved around other people,” with “the last one on the list.”
In the same conversation, she said the build-up “exploded,” describing how she began trying to “get through it,” and noting that in treatment people sometimes tell patients that “our addictions probably saved us at a certain point.”
Even after recovery, Panettiere said it didn’t get easier to set boundaries. She described years of being “the yes man” and said she would push herself on set even when it was “too much for any one person.”
She also told Jay Shetty on a podcast earlier this week that her relationship with her mother remained fraught. saying. “Everything was business.. I became the confidant and the assistant and the therapist and the shoulder to cry on and everything but her child.” Panettiere recalled telling Vogel. “I don’t want us to work together anymore.. I just want you to be my mom.” She said she was met with what she described as a blunt response: “You owe me.” Then. she said. “she walked out.”
Panettiere summed it up by saying, “The fact that she didn’t care to have a relationship with me was a tough pill to swallow.” She has framed her memoir as her own step toward making sense of the past.
But Vogel’s statement, issued to Page Six, takes direct aim at what Panettiere has shared—suggesting she believes the narrative is being driven by something other than truth. Vogel said, “the present drama is partially to sell books.”
She went on to describe a “personality ‘style’” marked by what she called “a need for control, entitlement and a lack of empathy,” adding that the “major fear is that someone will see through the mask they present to the world and discover who they truthfully are.”
Vogel also asserted that the behavior cannot be corrected, saying, “this condition cannot be ‘fixed’” and insisting that even continued efforts “to support,” “comfort,” or “encouragement given, it will never be enough.”
Her statement continued with a broader explanation of why she says she chose distance. saying. “After 20 years of trauma. I took the advice of professionals and chose the no-contact route.” Vogel tied that decision to what she described as painful familiarity with watching entertainment children “choose” self-destructive paths.
She wrote that “You cannot save someone who does not want to be saved. ” and called “Radical acceptance” “the most difficult challenge any parent must embrace.” Vogel also described what she says happens when someone leaves: “When someone leaves. the smear campaign begins; accusations. anger. belittling. gaslighting. etc.. are the classic signs of this behavior style.” She added that she sees “the craving of drama and punitive action” as something “to be expected.”
In closing, Vogel said she is “now retired” and searching for her “personal path to a joyous and peaceful life,” writing that there’s “always that flicker of hope [that Hayden], too, will find her path to inner peace.”
For Panettiere, the timing is tight: excerpts have already circulated ahead of This Is Me: A Reckoning, and now her mother’s reply is landing publicly even as her daughter prepares to tell her version at full volume. The family dispute, instead of cooling off, appears poised to take on new heat.
Hayden Panettiere Lesley Vogel memoir This Is Me: A Reckoning Jay Shetty The Hollywood Reporter Page Six Nashville